COBB tells Mazdaspeed/owners to F*&^ OFF! Basically

[LASERBLUE135]

WOW...

"For quite some time, the MAZDASPEED community has, in large part, been confrontational, disrespectful, unprofessional, vulgar or childish regarding any announcements and/or business decisions COBB Tuning has made on public forums. Responses ranging from outrage and profanity to threats of intellectual property piracy have become the normal reaction when things don't go exactly to their wishes. No amount of professionalism, realism or rationale has worked in turning these communications into more constructive discussions.

Although COBB Tuning is a business, it is made up of enthusiasts that work here and they love what they do. Everyone gets a lot of satisfaction from taking on the hard projects like cracking and controlling the MAZDASPEED ecu and making it do what no one else does. When ongoing criticism to these efforts is "**** COBB" or "I'm going to hack your software and give it away" or "**** these OTS maps" or "Hopefully Cobb will get it's head out of it's ***", it tends to make everyone less enthusiastic about working on it.

We have decided to bring MAZDASPEED development to a close because no one at COBB finds it rewarding to put in the hours and hours of effort just to have so many people spouting negativity and insults. In fact, many of our pro tuners have been monitoring the MAZDASPEED forum discussions to gauge interest and have come back with "Uh, nevermind...not worth dealing with it" responses. It's a shame that while the MAZDASPEED community is demanding more performance products from manufacturers, the tribal infighting, Lord of the Flies atmosphere and unrestrained attitude displayed on the forums is actually driving choice and new development out of the market. It might be fun for some, but the entire community suffers as a whole.

Regards,

Gary Sheehan
Director of Marketing
COBB Tuning"

 

[LASERBLUE135]

http://www.mazdas247.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123739010

http://forums.cobbtuning.com/forums/showthread.php?t=53017&page=2

 

[ms6z]

WTF..Are they fawkin serious???

 

[Jesse MS3GT]

They are serious. The owner of Mazdaspeedforums.org issued this response.

http://www.mazdaspeedforums.org/for...come/25141-cobb-tuning-mazdaspeed-forums.html

I see this as a great opportunity for CPE. I love the way the Cobb exhaust sounds and planned on purchasing it, but after reading Cobbs statement, I will not support Cobb.

I was amused by a fellow members response to this situation. Because they have failed producing quality parts, they have been "copping out", blaming the Mazda community as juvenile, so they have stopped supporting our platform. A fellow member decided to no longer use that phrase and instead use "Cobbing out".

 

[LASERBLUE135]

I will not support Cobb.

I agree 100%, how can anyone in the mazdaspeed comunity support this company from this day on, unless they issue a formal apology, this is unacceptable. (and truely bad/utterly stupid business). Why issue a statement at all? Just STFU and sell parts.

 

[ms6z]

After spending a shit load of $$ on your products, I have 2 words for COBB.. Fawk U

 

[Big Nate]

OK I am going to say this. I wholeheartedly disagree with what Cobb has done.

(this is the part that is going to hurt) But they made one good point. Lets get some constructive talk going about the Mazdaspeed platform. Please don't turn this into a burn Cobb to the ground thread. Lets just try and hit them where it hurts. The pocket book.


-Nate

 

[mndsm]

Well, as it was said, this leaves the door open for CP-E. I REALLY was looking forward to an Accessport for my car to get my tune on, as it seemed to be the most cost effective and easy to use solution. Once the protuner stuff was released, I was on board. Sucks that so many DB's in so many other places had to ruin it for the rest of us... forcing us to look elsewhere.

 

[niterydr]

I saw this coming with all the COBB bashing. Similar things happened to an Audi guy I know with a different tuner. He was known for reverse engineering hex files and they wouldn't sell him one.

So he decided to try to crack the s4 ecu. Hasn't been done yet on an open-ecu format, but individuals are working on it.

 

[Picklz]

It sucks having a vendor/company basically tell a community to f-off, but I can't say I blame them in this situation. MANY people with no clue as to what was/is involved with cracking the MS3/6 ECU and the complexity of it have been pretty un-grateful and disrespectful towards Cobb, a company trying to HELP them. Like they said in their response, why would you take on an incredibly difficult project when the people you are working on the project for just bash you if anything other than perfect, speedy results happen?

It's not uncommon for it to take 2-3 years or more for a new platform to be fully understood, especially one like the Mazda DISI. I don't know if this is just the first new performance platform that the people in this community have owned, and they just expected subie/evo support/abilities right away or what.

I guess it boils down to I'm sad to see we lost a big player in the tuning market for the speeds, It sucks that it came to this but I don't blame them in the least.

 

[Workdawg]

Protuner is still being release, so the AP is still a viable option.

 

[Picklz]

Protuner is still being release, so the AP is still a viable option.

If you can find a shop that's going to buy it.

 

[AJ]

All this did is give other companies and clear indication that there is now less competition in the mazdaspeed market, so it could be worth some extra time and money for development to grab that share.

I can see COBB's decison here, but no matter how fucking moronic the internet community can be on forums, money is money, and someone will step in to deal with the bullshit to make a buck.

 

[dmention7]

After reading some of the shit that was slung in various forums, I can't say I'm too surprised. Seems that a lot of people thought the AP was going to be some kind of miracle device right out of the box that would let them slap on a bigger turbo and run 500whp all day.

It sucks, but that's what happens when people go e-thugging around and bitching when things don't go exactly how they wanted, instead of putting their energy to actually being a part of the solution to the problems.

For now anyways, the mazdaspeed3/6 DISI motor is a pretty small market, and I can in many ways understand their decision to pull out of a market that's not guaranteed to be rewarding financially, and is unrewarding socially. Maybe not the most professional move, but understandable nonetheless.

As I understand it, a similar scenario occurred when the MSP came out, in many ways leading to the lack up support and currently expensive products for the platform.

 

[Schmitty]

If you can find a shop that's going to buy it.

Exactly! I just bought my AP, If I'm out 600USD because of some whiners I might flip out.

 

[mndsm]

Exactly! I just bought my AP, If I'm out 600USD because of some whiners I might flip out.

I'm just glad I hadn't splashed out the cash on one yet. Man I feel sad for you.

 

[mazdamn02]

I'm speechless, if they didn't want to continue work with the mazdaspeed platform, I'm not sure why they had to turn to an e-rant on a forum, if that's what they hate so much. Are you sure that quotation was not from April 1st?

 

[dmention7]

So, apparently all this means is that they are no longer producing OTS maps. Which makes a lot of sense actually. There is apparently a great deal of variance in the stock ECU "learnable" parameters from car to car, so why go through the trouble of making one size fits all maps, now that we can tune them ourselves?

At least that's the jist I got from the 247 thread. They are apparently still making parts and selling the APs, as well as the tuning software, just not doing any more development work. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I gathered....

 

[mazdamn02]

At least that's the jist I got from the 247 thread. They are apparently still making parts and selling the APs, as well as the tuning software, just not doing any more development work. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but that's what I gathered....

Without the context of reading the actual post, it sounds like they're not going to release any more new parts. So it's speculation...

 

[JohnnyT]

It sucks having a vendor/company basically tell a community to f-off, but I can't say I blame them in this situation. MANY people with no clue as to what was/is involved with cracking the MS3/6 ECU and the complexity of it have been pretty un-grateful and disrespectful towards Cobb, a company trying to HELP them. Like they said in their response, why would you take on an incredibly difficult project when the people you are working on the project for just bash you if anything other than perfect, speedy results happen?

It's not uncommon for it to take 2-3 years or more for a new platform to be fully understood, especially one like the Mazda DISI. I don't know if this is just the first new performance platform that the people in this community have owned, and they just expected subie/evo support/abilities right away or what.

I guess it boils down to I'm sad to see we lost a big player in the tuning market for the speeds, It sucks that it came to this but I don't blame them in the least.

Could not agree with you more.

Damn, and I was just about to buy an AP. You'd think being a marketing guy, he should have released this statement after April 20th (release date for ATR). Oh man would we have a ton of pissed off people!! Well, this Gary guy is a chode. If Cobb can't take heat for the problems they've brought on themselves, then they're not a viable business. They released shit, we hated, they did a bit better - nowhere near perfection, we reaped a few benefits, and now they're done. Oh well, saves my wallet as I was just looking to buy a HPFP and AP.